
our * *S? 



Issued By 

DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTS 

OF VIRGINIA 

JOS. D. EGGLESTON, Superintendent 

CO-OPERATIVE EOUCATION ASSOCIATION 

OF VIRGINIA 

Mrs.B.B.MUNFORD President 

\ 





1< 




Beautifying Our Schools 



MORE ATTRACTIVE GROUNDS 
AND EXTERIORS 



" I believe in all that makes life large and lovely — in beauty in 
the home, in the school, and in the common walks of life." 






The Co-operative Education Association of Virginia 



OFFICERS 

MRS. B. B. MUNFORD President 

GOV. WM. H. MANN 1st Vice-President 

J. STEWART BRYAN 2nd Vice-President 

J. P. McCONNELL 3rd Vice-President 

HENRY W. ANDERSON Treasurer 

J. H. BINFORD Executive Secretary- 
State Capitol, Richmond, Va. 

MRS. L. R. DASHIELL Director Citizens Leagues 

State Capitol, Richmond, Va. 



EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 

J. D. Eggleston, Chairman 
Murray Boocock Bruce R. Payne 

E. A. Alderman Chas. G. Maphis 

S. W. Fletcher Jackson Davis 

H. B. Frissell Jas. H. Dooley 

George H. Denny F. W. Darling 

Rosewell Page 



DEPARTMENTS 

Public Health Dr. Allen W. Freeman 

Pren T. S. Settle 

Demonstration Farms T. O. Sandy 

Libraries G. Carrington Moscley 

Taxation Bruce R. Payne 

(Jood Roads P. St. Julien "Wilson 

Industrial Work Miss E. G. Agncw 

Field Work Robert Frazer 

Legislation Rosewell Page 






l\ . NOtf/iv JUL 






^ 



(E0mmntuii£altij of Hfrgfnta. 

GOVERNOR'S OFFICE, 

Richmond, January 23rd, 1911. 

It would be very delightful in going through the State to 
find well -painted, well-kept schoolhouses, surrounded by beauti- 
ful grounds, planted with trees and flowers. Such schools would 
show the care of teachers and pupils, would leave more 
pleasant memories of the old school in years to come, and would 
make better pupils and citizens of our children. Not only so, 
but beautiful schools would have an influence for good upon the 
entire community. If the school is to become a social center, 
let us see to it that it is a beautiful spot, and let all citizens 
help in the good work. I wish that the year 1911 could see the 
last poorly-kept schoolhouse and bare school ground in Virginia. 



Ttr&^Th 



Governor. 



Page three 



The steadily growing movement in Virginia to beautify 
the exteriors and interiors of school buildings, and to improve 
and beautify sehool grounds, is one of the most hopeful indica- 
tions of our progress. 

Preventable ugliness is a sin, and most of it, like most ill- 
health, is preventable. The schoolhouse and schoolyard make a 
decided impression on children who are very impressionable. 

If the school and schoolyard be ugly, the impression is not 
a good one. If beautiful, the impression is pleasing and ele- 
vating. 

One of the main lines of the Co-operative Education Asso- 
ciation is the beautifying of schools and school grounds. The 
Executive Secretary of this Association, Mr. J. H. Binford, is 
making a specialty of this work, and he is meeting with great 
success, not only because he can give excellent advice in such 
matter, but because the friends of education are responding to his 
efforts. 

This essential feature of educational progress has my unre- 
served approval, and I trust that pupils, teachers, superin- 
tendents, trustees, and people will keep Mr. Binford busy 
answering questions, giving advice, and visiting communities 
that like wholesome and pleasing schools rather than ugly ones. 




Sup't Public Inst. 



"The school, adjusted to neighborhood needs, is the seed 
corn from which shall spring first the blade, then the ear, and 
finally the full corn in the ear of the new conception of country 
life." 



/*U-y. C lirf& 



Pres't Co-operative Education Ass'n. 



Page five 



The great majority of our grown people never enter the 
school of to-day. Their estimate of it is obtained from the un- 
painted building and neglected yard. Is it strange that so many 
parents send their children irregularly to such schools, and place a 
low estimate upon education? In a State wonderful in natural 
beauty, and dotted here and there with attractive homes, you 
find everywhere the same type of school grounds — bare, unkept — 
without a single element of beauty or attractiveness. Is this to 
continue forever? What about the children who attend these 
schools? Does it mean nothing that they spend all their school 
days amidst surroundings .so unlovely? 

We must be the leaders in this work of school improvement. 
You spend all your working hours in the school. It is your 
school as well as the childrens'. Why be content to spend your 
time in an unattractive place, when just a little thought and a 
little effort will work a transformation? Let's stop dreaming 
about beautiful schools, and do just a few definite things to im- 
prove conditions. What are you going to do to make you? 
school more attractive ? 

Will you not encourage the teachers in this good work? 
When possible will you not give them a little financial aid from 
the school funds? In some parts of our State we are erecting a 
better type of one-room school, and are making more attractive 
the ones erected in years gone by. The expenditure of a very 
small sum will work a remarkable change. What about the 
schools in your district ? Will you not try to make them more 
attractive? 

B>rij0ol ilmprofcmtttt iGrarjiwa. 

Every league should have a Committee on Grounds and 
Buildings, and the close of each year should see some definite 
things accomplished in the way of beautifying the school. Let 
us all go to work with a will and it will soon come to pass that 
all over the State the school will be the most attractive place in the 
community , 

Page six 



" The dirty, smoke-begrimed schoolhouse, with its cracked 
and broken plaster, warped floor, rusty stove, and dirt-stained 
windows, can no longer have a place in modern country life, if 
we wish to re-establish it as the rallying point in rural life — a 
place where we shall hope to save the country boy and girl for 
the farm and farm life. The beauty and dignity of the modern 
building must be such that people will point to it as our building, 
and emulate its architecture in the construction and arrangement 
of their own homes. The grounds must be made attractive with 
plots of velvety grass, with trees, shrubs and flowers. Such sur- 
roundings exert a marvelous influence over the children. The 
children who come from homes where culture and refinement are 
unknown will enter a new life in the school ; children from homes 
abounding in modern comforts and conveniences will find the 
new school atmosphere homelike and congenial." — Foght's 
" American Rural School." 




WHO UARES? IT'S ONLY A COUNTRY SCHOOL 

If children are daily surrounded by those influences that 
elevate them, that make them clean and well ordered, that make 
them love flowers and pictures and proper decorations, they at 
last reach that degree of culture where nothing else will please 
them. When they grow up and have homes of their own they 
will have them clean, neat, bright with pictures, and fringed with 
shade trees and flowers. — Henry Sabin. 

Page seven 



1. Is your school painted and in good repair? 

2. Has it two sanitary closets? 

3. If in a field or town lot, are there a few good trees 
on the lawn? 

4. If in a natural forest, have the unnecessary trees 
and the undergrowth been cut out? 

5. Has your school a well kept lawn ? 




6. Is there need of a good wire fence to protect the 
grounds from roving stock ? 

7. If in a city or village, are flowers growing in your 
schoolyard? 

8. Is it desirable to have at your school a hedge, climb- 
ing vines on the building, some of our native shrubs and 
wild flowers grouped on the lawn ? 

9. Is there a School Improvement League at your school? 
10. What will you do to improve you? school? 



Page eight 




AS IT IS 




AS IT OUGHT TO BE 



jjjofa to Mukt a Jtettg ICaum. 

Kentucky Blue Grass forms the basis of practically all of 
the lawn mixtures, and the chief reason for adding other grasses 
is to occupy the ground until Blue Grass becomes established, 
which takes about three years to make a perfect turf. But it 
will not thrive in an acid soil, which must be corrected by an ap- 
plication of lime, at the rate of one ton to the acre, or smaller 
quantity, at an interval of two or three years. The making of a 
lawn depends upon thorough preparation, rich soil, and sowing 
plenty of seed. The ground should be broken fully eight inches, 
and made perfectly smooth and thoroughly pulverized. Sow a 
mixture of fourteen pounds of Kentucky Blue Grass and four- 
teen pounds of Red Top to the acre. This formula is well suited 
to all of the general types of soil. For shady places add to the 
above formula five pounds of Wood Meadow Grass, five pounds 
of Various Leaved Fescue, and five pounds of Crested Dog's Tail, 
and sow at the rate of thirty pounds to the acre. For sandy 
soil, add to formula number one five pounds of Creeping Bent, 
five pounds of Rhode Island Bent, four pounds of Fine Leaved 
Fescue, and sow at the rate of twenty-eight pounds to the acre. 
Rake the seed in lightly. If the land is dry, roll it. Sow early 
in the fall — the earlier the better. In the western half of the 
State by the middle of August. Getting a good stand, put the 
lawn mower at work as soon as the grass is two or three inches 
high in the spring, and mow off about every ten days, leaving 
the cut grass to decay and mulch the lawn. Do not rake it off ; 
neither mow in very dry weather. Make a good application of 
good Raw Bone Meal at seeding and every spring thereafter. 
One hundred pounds of Nitrate Soda can be sown to a good ad- 
vantage, which will encourage a rapid growth, and this should 
be put on as a top dressing, and when the grass is dry. Sheep 
and hog manure will also be a fine top dressing ; but do not use 
stable manure on account of weed seeds. Clover can be added 
if fancy dictates. There is no such a thing as universal lawn 
grass mixture. The exercise of judgment with the above sug- 
gestions will bring better results than conforming to special mix- 
tures. 




Commissio?ier of Agriculture. 
Page ten 



Very often we hear teachers say : "I should like to have as 
pretty lawn, but where are the children going to play? In many 
instances where this question is asked the school grounds are too 
small for a playground. The pupils simply stand around in' 
groups, and trample the grass out, or else they play such games 
as jumping rope, that could be played elsewhere. This should 
not be allowed. Again, where the grounds are large, we have 



at work 

seen a basket-ball court immediately in front of the school, 
instead of off to one side. In another instance, where the 
school board spent several hundred dollars beautifying a yard, 
the boys were allowed to make a base-ball diamond on the front 
lawn, while just across the street was a vacant lot, that might 
have been used. Have a small lawn in front of your school, and 
compel the pupils to keep off it. It will be a valuable training 
for them. 

Page eleven 



In planting trees and shrubs the main features to observe 
are — plant trees on or near the boundary lines, not less than 
thirty feet apart ; hide the foundations of the building, and cover 
the corners with shrubbery ; preserve wide, open spaces of lawn, 
avoiding scattered planting. 

The plants selected for school grounds should be the kinds 
commonly grown in the neighborhood, and known to succeed 
without special care. It is not necessary or desirable to buy rare 
and expensive sorts from a nurseryman. Avoid the quick-grow- 
ing, short-lived and cheap-looking trees, as the willows and pop- 
lars. These may be planted among the more desirable kinds, for 
immediate effect, and cut out later ; but they should never be used 
for permanent trees. Fruit trees, especially the common apple 
and the crab apple, are decidedly ornamental. Some of the bor- 
der planting may be of fruit trees, which will also be useful in 
class work. 

In rural communities all of the trees, and most, if not all, of 
the shrubs, may be dug from the woods and fields. That is the 
best way to spend Arbor Day. Trees from the wild do not 
usually grow as well the first two years as trees from a nursery, 
chiefly because the latter have a more compact root system ; but 
with good care wild trees should do equally well in time. The 
selection of plants is a local problem. The following lists in- 
clude only a few of the many sorts that have been found quite 
generally adapted for planting on school grounds. 

Trees. — Sugar maple, Norway maple, American white elm, 
basswood or American linden, American sycamore, white oak, 
pine oak, Norway spruce, white spruce, white pine, common apple, 
crab apple. 

Shrubs. — Red-twigged dogwocd, Japanese quince, flowering 
currant, snowball, golden bell, (Forsythia), lilac, mock orange or 
syringa, panicled hydrangea, California privet, weigela, rose, 
hibiscus or althea, vibernum, dentzia, Tartarian honeysuckle, 
spiraea, (three-lobed and Reeves.) 




Page twelve 



Sanitary (iutbmlbtttga. 

The school beautiful and the school sanitary should be and 
can be synonymous. The great advances in construction and 
beautification have been accompanied by even greater advances 
in sanitation, ventilation and lighting, without which no school 
is now suited or fit for the reception of pupils. At least four things 
are to be considered in securing the sanitation of the school : 
First, the building should be well ventilated, according to the 
system tested and approved in many States ; second, the school 
should be well lighted, as required by law ; third, each room 
should be provided with drinking water, and each pupil should 
have his own drinking cup ; fourth, the school should be equipped 
with sanitary outbuildings. It is difficult to decide which of 
these is the most important. Without ventilation, diseases are 
spread and minds are clouded ; without proper lighting, eyesight 
is irreparably damaged ; without sanitary outbuildings, typhoid 
fever and like diseases may be scattered through a hundred homes. 

The construction of sanitary outbuildings is in no sense dif- 
ficult or expensive. Such buildings have to be constructed. 
They cost little more if well-built and sanitary than if made of 
old boards nailed together in the most insanitary fashion. Each 
school should have two of these buildings, for pupils of the dif- 
ferent sexes, separated as widely as possible. They should be 
water-tight ; doors and windows well screened, and be provided 
with the simple sanitary arrangements necessary for the health of 
pupils. Full specifications for these buildings will be furnished 
by the State Department of Health, at Richmond, upon request. 

Inexpensive boardwalks should be constructed from the 
school exits to these outbuildings. At a very small cost trellised 
screens can be placed around these buildings with entrances in 
front and to the rear. If these screens are planted with running 
vines during the early spring, they will present the appearance 
of arbors, and, if properly placed, may really add to the beauty 
of the school. No investment in the school will be more profit- 
able than such buildings. 





t 



#l\ 7 . l^i/CCtX. &^L*st^> 



~1 



Page fourteen Commissioner of Health. 




These attractive young people have determined to lead the rest of the pupils in 
the work of beautifying ttieir school grounds. Some of the schools are organizing 
Junior Leagues. Why not have one in your school ? 



I know of nothing that will add more to the appearance of 
school grounds than symmetrically laid out roads and walkways 
kept in good condition. While some of the agricultural students 
are getting valuable experience in grass culture while keeping 
the school grounds covered with a green sod, others might learn 
important lessons in road construction by laying out, building 
and maintaining the roads and walkways in the school grounds, 
and at the same time add materially to the appearance of the 
grounds. 




State Highway Commissioner. 



Page fifteen 



Here's the plain story of what one teacher accomplished : 
Was she young or old, pretty or homely ? You may picture her 
as it suits your fancy ; neither age nor looks nor name has aught 
to do with the facts here related. The truth to be emphasized 
is that the work was done and that a similar work may be done 
by you . 

Our teacher — our heroine, really, for that is what she is — 
took charge of a country school — just an average one-room 
school. Nobody was interested in it. It had never been painted. 
One of the rude blinds had fallen off its hinges ; the lock to the 
door had been broken ; and the window panes were dirt be- 
grimed. Did you ever see such a school ? Within this cheerless 
place were bare walls, a broken stove, and a few rough desks, 
and a floor literaly covered with dirt. 

Our teacher was not accustomed to such surroundings. 
There came to her at first a feeling of repulsion ; but the next 
moment there came the fighting spirit, that's why she was a 
heroine. After taking the names of the fourteen pupils who 
registered the first day, she appealed to each of them. "Boys 
and girls," said she, " we are going to work and study here to- 
gether for the next seven months. We want things neat and 
clean ; we want a pretty school. Which of you will help me 
right now ? 

All agreed. Buckets were quickly borrowed from the neigh- 
borhood, and in less than two hours floors, desks, and window 
panes were shining. 

The next morning, when the children arrived, they found 
muslin curtains at the two windows. The whole place was so 
transformed that a little later, when one of the trustees dropped 
in, he was loud in his praise of teacher and pupils. 

After that it was an easy matter to get this trustee's help in 
improving the school. 

Our teacher had a hard task before her, but in the course of 

time, by holding an entertainment and by gaining the support of 

the trustees, she had the building painted inside and out, hung 

a few pictures on the walls, and had the yard cleaned up. 

Another entertainment brought in enough money to establish a 

school library. 
Page sixteen 



All this time the good old studies — reading, writing, andl 
arithmetic — were being well taught, the children were happy, 
and the attendance had more than doubled. 

And the teacher? Why, she was as happy as could be, for 
nothing brings happiness like success. Her varied interests ex- 
alted her above many of the petty annoyances of the class-room. 
She was giving her community a new and inspiring idea of the 
school as an institution, and she was shaping in a larger mould 
the lives of her children. 

We need in Virginia just such teachers as the one described 
in this brief narrative. We must improve the neglected one-room 
school. Teachers in these dear old schools, look around you as, 
you teach to-day. Is your school cheerless and unattractive? 
Will you not make some effort to improve conditions? 




THE NEW TYPE OF VIRGINIA SCHOOL FOR TOWN AND VILLAGE 



Page seventeen 




*P Ian for 

jpive acre School Grounds 

flamilion fti^h School. 

Garters viiL^ Va, 




COUNTY ROA.D 



Plan ^or ^txxjo acre, 
School Grouncl 

cPan Rivep H\^h SahooL 




AS IT IS 




AS IT WILL BE 



030 218 050 7 * 



